Disclaimer: I own... hmm. I own nothing. The bank owns any money I make, at the moment. The concepts building 1001Keys do not belong to me, most probably.
Feedback: Why not? It helps me write more and better...
Crossover: Megatokyo
AlbumThisWasWrittenTo: The Black Album, on vinyl no less.
Pre-fic Comments:
Words in 'leet are in braces after the paragraph.
Yet again, Softex is the height of fashion for this particular fic.
Xander whistled as he entered the school lounge, spotting Willow. Her face was shadowed by her large hat, but he could still see that his oldest, bestest friend wasn't of the happy expression, so he wandered over.
"Willow!," Xander called out. "What are you doing here? Fly! Be free, little bird, you defy category!"
"I'm looking for Buffy," Willow said, looking worried as well, now. She got up, and the two of them began walking together.
"Oh, she went with Giles about an hour ago. Some kind of field trip deal," Xander reported. "I can't believe they didn't take me with them!"
"If she doesn't get back soon, Snyder's really...," Willow began, before spotting said man. "...done a great job with the fair this year, hasn't he, Xander?"
Snyder, never a man with a sunny disposition, was even grumpier than usual these days. A small group of people who had been infected could only change shape with much effort. Locked into a shape between cat and man, his tail was lashing furiously.
"Principal Snyder! Great career fair, sir! Really!," Xander gushed, trying to evade Snyder's incipient wrath. "In fact, I'm so inspired by your leadership, I'm thinking principal school. I wanna walk in your shoes. Not your actual shoes, of course, because you're a tiny person. Not tiny in the small sense, of course. Okay, I'm done now."
"Where is she?," Snyder growled.
Xander really hated having to hide his true form in public. Given the added height that were-people got in their hybrid form, the trollish Principal was now higher than him!
"Who?," Willow asked innocently.
"You know who," Snyder retorted. His whiskers twitched.
"You mean Buffy?," Willow asked, pretending to look around. "I just saw her--"
"And don't feed me that 'I just saw her a minute ago, she's around here somewhere' story," the previously short principal snapped.
"But I did... just see her a minute ago, and she is... around here somewhere!," Willow insisted, trying to keep her friend out of trouble. Giles or no Giles, if Snyder learnt that Buffy was off the grounds during school hours...
"For what it's worth," Xander lazily added.
"It's worth nothing, Harris," Snyder interrupted. "Whatever comes out of your mouth is a meaningless waste of breath. An airborne toxic event."
Xander's eyes visibly narrowed at this. How /dare/ that... troll talk to /him/ like that! "Well, I'm glad you feel comfortable enough to be so honest with me. And I can only hope that one day you're willing to be that honest with yourself."
"Fascinating," Snyder said, not listening. He marched off, in search of a Buffy to discipline.
"Well, love to stay and chat, but I got an appointment with the warden on standard riot procedure," Xander said to Willow. "Ciao."
"Okay, see ya," Willow waved, taking the opportunity to check her hat.
Two men in dark suits approached her as Xander left.
"Willow Rosenberg?," one of them asked. "Come with us, please?"
"Excuse me?," Willow asked, eyes wide and starting on another path of worryage.
"Let's walk," the second man said.
The two men took her by the arms and guided her to a curtained-off area of the lounge. They pulled the curtain aside for the short hackeress. She obediently went through as the two followed her, letting the curtain fall behind them. A waiter in a white jacket and black bow tie held an hors-d'oeuvre tray up.
"Try the canape'. It's excellent," the first man offered.
Willow shook her head. Between the butterflies, and her new dietary requirements, she'd never keep anything down.
"What is all this?," she asked.
"You've been selected to meet with Mr. McCarthy, head recruiter for the world's leading software concern," the second man stated. "The jet was delayed by fog at Sea-Tac, but he should be here any minute. Please, make yourself comfortable."
"But I didn't even get my test back," Willow protested weakly.
"The test was irrelevant. We've been tracking you for some time," the second man replied.
"Is that a good thing?," the hacker asked, starting to worry.
"I would think so. We're extremely selective. In fact, only one other Sunnydale student met our criteria," the first man said as they left through the curtain.
Cordelia felt strange.
All day, she'd felt as if something were missing.
Something important. Even more important than her Softex handbag.
She could barely keep it together enough to stay in human form. She didn't have any dresses designed for a seven foot high catgirl.
"What's wrong, Cordelia?," Karen asked, worried.
"Something's missing," Cordelia verbalised. "Something is wrong."
Her eyes came to rest on Harris, and her breath began to quicken as she realised what it was that was missing.
Him.
"Xander!," Xander heard. He turned to find Cordelia looking at him with pleading in her eyes. "I need to talk to you. In private."
"Okay," Xander shrugged. "Janitor's closet okay for you?"
The cheerleader nodded as he opened the door for her. Once he'd shut it behind himself.
"Okay, I don't know why," Queen C began, "but I need you. /Bad/."
Xander snorted. "I thought you were above me?"
"Something's happening," Cordelia continued. "It's like... an addiction or something!"
"You're dreaming," Xander frowned. He moved to push past her, but Cordelia grabbed his forearms as they reached for the doorknob.
"God! LOOK AT YOURSELF!," Cordelia snarled at him, growing a couple feet and breaking a few lines of stitching. "You'd never act this nasty before... before /it/ happened."
Xander paused, consciously thinking about his actions and realising that the socialite was right. This wasn't like him. He turned back to her, agony in his eyes as he thought about his dreams.
Not his dreams. The demon's dreams.